It’s “foy-yay” in Canada: British and French influence.
But in French it would be [fwa je] (“fwah-yay”), I believe.
But yeah in the U.S., it’s usually pronounced as spelled.
Yes, the Lexicon Valley podcast is outstanding, and you should all check it out! Older episodes, pre-McWhorter, have more of a focus on slang and dialect – the new host, McWhorter, is an academic linguist, so he’ll be happy to talk for 45 minutes about the conjugation of “to be” in various language families.
But it’s not like you need to listen to them in order. Want to find out where "shit show, “gringo,” or “The Big Apple” came from? Just go back to older episodes.
(McWhorter’s great, don’t get me wrong – I just think he’s a little less fun than the Garfield/Vuolo/Zimmerman team that was doing the show until last year.)
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A bunch of French pronunciation references agree: it’s “fwah yay” in French. I had no idea!
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in my limited experience hearing people say the word in the US, it’s at least 50% in favor of “foy yay” as opposed to “foy ur.” But I don’t spend that much time talking to desk clerks at hotels, receptionists at office buildings, or … who the hell uses that word regularly, anyway?
If I were to hear a fellow American pronounce foyer “foy-yay,” I would assume they were being facetious, like someone pronouncing the name of the store Target “tar-zhay.”
And it taught me that it’s a generational not regional dialect quick. Which I didn’t know own could be a thing.
I have rarely had such a feeling of eureka as I had when they played the clips from the slate podcasters and then explained exactly what was going on. It was like “yeah, no, that’s exactly what I do! Finally someone gets me!”
Growing up, I actually did hear both the “foy-er” and “foy-ay” pronunciation, unironically/unaffectedly. This was well before that type of tongue-in-cheek hipsterism. There was actually a post about it here, and the results are almost dead even, 104 - 101 in favor of “foy-urr.” Yes, there’s Canadian and UK and other English speakers in there, but it’s still mostly going to be US English speakers. (I say “foy-urr,” but I started out saying “foy-yay” as that’s how I first learned it here in Chicago in school.)
And, actually, here’s another one. I noticed that British English tends not to use this subjunctive construction. There is a difference in American English between “if I was” and “if I were,” but I tend not to see the “if I were” construction in British English. It seems like “if I was” has completely replaced it. I may be wrong, but I’ve definitely noticed it in the Harry Potter books.
Brits seem much more likely to refer to their significant other as “my partner”, it seems to me. But for some reason, hearing “my partner” in the U.S. or Canada makes me think that the speaker is deliberately being cagey about the gender of their boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever.
:smack: That will teach me to ever trust my mother-in-law. Who, I should add, has never been to England.
But you do use Nappy instead of Diaper (not that this is relevant to this discussion).
I really should have stayed lurking on this thread, huh?
The US ‘in back of’ meaning behind is never used in British English so sounds a bit jarring when I read it in a novel. Don’t know how common this construction is across the US these days.
Not quite the flavour of the thread but Fire road is an Americanism that has successfully taken root in the mother tongue, and I doubt was ever used pre-1980 or so. We do occasionally have forest fires in some hot years but forestry road would be the English equivalent I guess. Must have arisen from the reach and popularity of US outdoor sports writers and journalists.
The word graft is a strange one, recall asking about it on here previously - very rarely used in the US sense of corruption, although well-read people in the UK would prob recognise this usage. In the UK it sort of means the opposite - hard, honest work.
My Dad has quite gnarly, working man’s hands and I remember asking him when I was little what were all the bumps and calluses - that’s hard graft son is what that is.
I just heard a Brit at the pub say “Give us a pint of Guinness.”
Using “us” in this manner is very common in the UK and never used like this in NA.
I was reading one of those true crime novels about a notorious Liverpool gangster who was under surveillance in Amsterdam in the 80s - one day he was heard arranging to meet his associates in the cafe byus. Dutch police search the A-Z for this cafe but there’s not a single place of this name in Holland. Frantically get in touch with the Liverpool police to see if they can shed any light - yes, would that be related to the cafe bymine, or the cafe byours? Basically he was saying the cafe near me.
In BrE “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” would be considered patronising or diminutive if applied to a mature adult. In your teens and twenties you can have boyfriends and girlfriends but, much beyond that, it can sound odd.
“Partner” is non-specific about gender, but doesn’t ring as coy. However it can ring as coy about formal marital status. Your spouse, husband or wife is married to you; your partner may or may not be. Plus, of course, “partner” can be ambiguous; it requires context to say whether it refers to a business partner or to a conjugal partner.
SFAIK in BrE there is no generic term for a non-marital conjugal partner, but in AusE there is: de facto (treated as a noun).
There are some verbs that are easily understandable, but more common in one or the other. Dreamt vs dreamed e.g. My American spell-checkers hate dreamt, but American me prefers that word. It sounds more elegant.
One I don’t like and actually matters is the date format. Yesterday was 9/12, September 12th. Yes, I know it makes more sense to do it the other way, but I prefer it written to how I say it. 12 September makes me think there are 12 Septembers. If I do dates internationally, I would call yesterday 2017-09-12. That doesn’t bother me or confuse me.
And I have no idea if half 9 means 8:30 or 9:30.
In my world, “get bent” is a lot more hostile than get “out of here”. . .prob a lot closer to the UK definition!
mc
Learnt vs. learned is another.
And half 9 means 9:30.
It’s like you guys are purposely trying to ignore the OP’s instructions. They’re asking for words that STILL MEAN THE SAME THING in both dialects but are only used in one.
I’ve told this story before, but here goes: In Army basic training, it’s a common form of punishment to have to chug your canteen until TPTB tell you to stop. Some soldiers will try to cheat by only sipping it slowly, and hoping not to be noticed in the crowd of 100 recruits.
So we’re being forced to drink after some screw-up or another (not filing into the chow hall in the correct sequence, I believe), and after a while, the drill sergeants are yelling “Put 'em up! Put 'em up!”
Half of us stopped drinking and reholstered the canteens. The other half (including me), unfamiliar with this expression, kept raising the bottle higher and higher until we’re practically under a waterfall and choking on the stream. Everyone, drill sergeants and recruits, was…confused.
h.
I don’t know if it’s a personal quirk or an Indian English expression but one of the guys I work with acknowledges a new fact with a very simple “Oh is it?” The meaning is clear, and the logic is obvious, but it’s not a construction I find at all familiar.
Just an occasion like he will mention that he is going down three floors to the vending machine, and I will say that there is a vending machine machine on this floor, hidden around the corner behind the receptionist, or letting him know we are hiring a new tester, he says “Oh is it?”